As of mid-October 2025, AMD has secured two major AI deals that position it as a significant challenger to Nvidia’s market dominance, though it does not yet threaten the incumbent’s overall leadership. The partnerships are with two key players in the AI industry: OpenAI and Oracle.
AMD’s AI deals
OpenAI strategic partnership:
Deal details: Announced on October 6, 2025, AMD will supply OpenAI with up to 6 gigawatts of its Instinct GPUs over multiple years, starting in 2026. As part of the deal, OpenAI received warrants to acquire a stake of up to 10% in AMD, vesting as certain delivery and stock price milestones are met.
Impact on the market: This is a major strategic win for AMD, creating a deep partnership with one of the most influential AI companies. The unique financial arrangement gives OpenAI a vested interest in AMD’s success, which could lead to tighter future collaboration and a potential ripple effect convincing other companies to adopt AMD chips.
Oracle cloud infrastructure deal:
Deal details: Announced on October 14, 2025, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) will be the first hyperscaler to deploy a massive supercluster of AMD’s Instinct MI450 GPUs. The deal includes an initial deployment of 50,000 GPUs starting in Q3 2026, with plans for further expansion.
Impact on the market: The Oracle deal gives AMD a crucial foothold in the cloud provider market, a segment where Nvidia has long been dominant. Oracle’s endorsement and commitment to such a large deployment signal that AMD’s technology is a viable and powerful alternative for large-scale AI workloads.
Why Nvidia should be “worried”
While Nvidia remains the dominant force in AI hardware, AMD’s recent wins are creating a more competitive landscape. The reasons for concern include:
Customer diversification: Tech giants and cloud providers are actively seeking alternatives to Nvidia to diversify their supply chains and avoid dependence on a single provider. AMD is presenting itself as a credible and open option.
Strategic partnerships: Unlike standard sales, AMD’s deals involve strategic partnerships with key industry players. This moves the relationship beyond a simple customer-vendor dynamic and could yield long-term gains in market share and technology development.
Software moat is shrinking: Nvidia’s software ecosystem, particularly its CUDA platform, has been a key advantage. However, sources suggest the software barrier is less significant for “inference” workloads (running AI models), which is a key area for OpenAI and Oracle. This opens the door for AMD’s rival ROCm platform.
AMD’s technical advances: With its new generation of chips like the MI450, AMD is pushing performance boundaries. The MI450 is built on a 2nm process, which could give it an edge over Nvidia’s upcoming 3nm chips, demonstrating that AMD is competing at the forefront of technical innovation.